Fieldhouse floor will cost up to $350K to replace

At only 15 years old parts of the floor that have been repaired need repairs.
Doug Raflik/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

$70,000 in repairs already spent

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Fond du Lac High School Athletic Director David Michalkiewicz stands on an area of the Fieldhouse floor that was replaced recently due to ongoing problems. About $70,000 in repairs have been made since the Fieldhouse was built in 2000.(Photo: Doug Raflik/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo

FOND DU LAC - A failing gymnasium floor inside Fond du Lac High School's Fieldhouse could cost the school district more than $350,000 to repair.

Shoddy workmanship and lack of an extended warranty are said to be reasons the Fond du Lac School District has had to pour money into the floor, beginning not too long after it was installed in 2000, when the new high school was built.

To date, about $70,000 has been spent on replacing problem areas, but more keep cropping up, said John Williams, the district’s facilities director.

“The floor is depressed and there are areas you can stick your foot through,” Williams said.

Members of the Fond du Lac School Board toured the Fieldhouse after their regular meeting on Monday to view cracked and broken floor boards, some with chunks missing out of them, weak seams, soft spots and a failing sub floor.

Problems first began in 2003, Williams said, but the company who installed the floor, Baseman Brothers out of Ixonia, told him they were not obligated to make repairs because there was only a one-year warranty, with no extensions.

“They said part of the problem were the rolling bleachers we were using (in the Fieldhouse) and we have since gotten rid of them. Then we found out that was not the case since we are having the same problems in the small (high school) gym,” Williams said.

That year they replaced about 57 maple floorboards at a cost of $2,000. After that, repairs continued to be made through the years, using Baseman Brothers, Williams said, in hopes there would be some resolution.

In 2008 the district turned to Stalker Sports Floors of New London for help. Williams told the school board he is confident the company stands behind their work and recommended they be hired to install the new floor.

“In 2010 we had some real issues, boards were cracked and breaking, so we replaced 650 boards for $11,000 with an additional $40,000 in expenses to have the floor sanded and refinished," he said. The last major repair was in 2016 at a cost of $7,600.

Williams said he believes the underlying issue is the floor structure, known as a Mach-1 floor system. It consists of concrete, then a rubber foam pad, plywood and then wooden sleepers, which are wood supports set a certain distance apart that the floor rests on.

The supports were set at nine-inch intervals, Williams, said, when they should have been closer together. The gaps caused a “lot of play in the floor,” he said.

A gym floor should last decades, and Riverside Elementary School's gymnasium was held up as an example. The floor was 41 years old when it was replaced in 2008, after the city experienced a 100-year flood. If not for the flood, it still would have had years left of use, Williams said.

“Second to the high school, it is the (school district’s) busiest gym and there is a five-year warranty on that floor, and every year the company (Stalker) does a re-coating they add another year (to the warranty),” Williams said.

Board members Linda Uselmann asked if any other sub-standard work has shown up since the high school was built. Superintendent Jim Sebert said the tennis courts will also have to replaced at a cost of around $800,000 due to water seeping underneath the courts.

Bray Architects had specified that type of flooring be used for the 37,000 square-foot Fieldhouse when the high school was built, Williams said. It was a new flooring system and there were a lot of new field houses going up at this time throughout the state that were using the same system.

“It is unfortunate certainly but it is the hand we are dealt,” Sebert said. “We've tried for years to extend the life of the floor by replacing boards and sections but have come to the point where safety issues require us to replace the floor,” he said.

It was brought up that a 14-year-old basketball player was impaled by a four-inch splinter from a gym floor in Feb. 2016 during a tournament played in Middleton. The floor was only 15 years old. Williams said he believes it is the same kind of floor put in by the same company.

The new Fieldhouse floor could be funded by splitting the cost over two years, or using fund balance since it is a one time expenditure, Sebert said. He thinks they could make the two-budget option work.

The plan is to replace the floor this summer, in time for the start of the 2017-18 school year.

Reach Sharon Roznik at sroznik@fdlreporter.com or 920-907-7936; on Twitter: @sharonroznik.

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Fond du Lac High School Athletic Director David Michalkiewicz presses his foot down on a loose floor board in the Fond du Lac High School Fieldhouse. The school district is looking to replace the floor this summer at a cost of up to $350,000, due to ongoing problems.(Photo: Doug Raflik/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)